I had a a Skype interview after successful competency based interview.
They asked in total about 7/8 questions.
I answered 4 of them right and completely bugged down for the rest. I was like “can you repeat the question” “euh sorry I am lost” “can you give me an example”
Anyway, I am still 50/50. It wasn’t bad and I would assume that they do meet stressed and anxious candidates.
I am Hoping to still have a chance.
In your opinion, how many candidates were In the last round? And how long would it take for them to get back to me?
I did Not ask the question during the interview.
Could I still send the HR and email and ask for more details?
Thank you for your input!

Good luck for the interview results. I know you are more nervous than ever, but try to stop yourself sending emails asking for details. If it's been too long, you can follow up about the results of the interview, but I wouldn't write anything just after the interview itself.

I had a really bad interview a month ago, where I felt like the interviewer just kept pushing me to clarify and also interrupted some of my answers. Some other questions I was simply forced to say I don't know the answer to. I was also outside in the cold in a remote mountain area because I was trying to catch signal to do the interview while being on field assignment. After the interview I felt really anxious that I didn't project myself well, I even drafted a letter to explain the situation. I also worried about how many people were in the last round, counted days, couldn't do anything else. In the end, my partner stopped me from sending it, and forced me to forget about it and do other things. I got accepted anyway, despite my gut feeling waiting for a rejection letter.

I had a a Skype interview after successful competency based interview.
They asked in total about 7/8 questions.
I answered 4 of them right and completely bugged down for the rest. I was like “can you repeat the question” “euh sorry I am lost” “can you give me an example”
Anyway, I am still 50/50. It wasn’t bad and I would assume that they do meet stressed and anxious candidates.
I am Hoping to still have a chance.
In your opinion, how many candidates were In the last round? And how long would it take for them to get back to me?
I did Not ask the question during the interview.
Could I still send the HR and email and ask for more details?
Thank you for your input!

Hi Amber!

If it helped, I thought I did terribly for my interview as well like I legit thought I destroyed my chances and just felt like crap after. A friend of mine (who also works in the UN) told me that no matter our experience level, we'd always feel like there's more to say or something else we'd like to add after an interview. The reality may be a lot less harsh than our perception. Although, sometimes your impressions are spot-on and maybe you didn't do as well as you thought you should have but there's not much you can do except to be positive and patient. When I got rejected for my last 2 interviews, they took a really long time to get back to me like about 8-9 months and another they didn't bother at all. From my experience and from what I read online, about less than 10 make it to the interview round (for one of my interviews, they told me only 8 got through). I think it's alright to send a follow-up email after but please be aware that they might not get back to you at all especially if they have already decided against you. I agree with Starryhindsight to ease up on the emails. If you're their selected candidate, you can be sure that they will contact you and keep you in the loop but just know that even then, it might take awhile for example, almost all the updates I received were a month apart even until now.

Thank you both for sharing your experience and for taking the time to answer me.

I actually ended up sending an email yesterday... I know I shouldn’t have but I just couldn’t help it.

The Head of HR answered me. She happened to be on the panel. She informed me that they were still interviewing candidates for the position and then they will follow through the procedure and that will take another month or so. She told me not to expect anything before mid Feb.
Could it be that they already have selected the person for the role and are waiting to go through all checks to notify me that I was unsuccessful?

I applied for Unicef security associate on the 5th December 2018,had telephone interview on the 17th of December 2018. Since then I have not had any feed back from them. How long would it take them to get back to me?..

Thank you both for sharing your experience and for taking the time to answer me.

I actually ended up sending an email yesterday... I know I shouldn’t have but I just couldn’t help it.

The Head of HR answered me. She happened to be on the panel. She informed me that they were still interviewing candidates for the position and then they will follow through the procedure and that will take another month or so. She told me not to expect anything before mid Feb.
Could it be that they already have selected the person for the role and are waiting to go through all checks to notify me that I was unsuccessful?

It's good that they got back to you though! I'd take that as a good sign to be honest. For the 2 interviews I was rejected for, they didn't bother to reply to any of my emails (not my follow-up after the interview nor the one a month after). It's good that she gave you an indication of the timeline as well. When was the interview? In my case, I was notified after 2 weeks about the 2nd interview which they didn't actually mention from the 1st! They also told me to expect to hear from them after a month. So my timeline was interview in July, request for reference in August then notification of appointment in September. I was just recently told by another candidate who went for the same interview that he got his rejection email only just recently in December. So I'd say if you didn't hear anything for at least 3-4 months then you can either follow-up or assume the worse but as you can see, the overall process is quite lengthy.

I'd also like to add that because it's so lengthy, it's not something you should hold your breath over. Continue doing what you're doing because even if you've been selected, it's a whole other lengthy process of its own where they will constantly remind you to not quit anything yet or "make any irreversible changes to your present situation". At least not until you've passed the medical exam and signed the contract. My own on-boarding process is taking quite some time so I'm not sure if I'll start at the expected date (I'm talking of the possibility of a month's delay to the starting date) but thankfully with my situation and the arrangements I've made, it's not costing me.

Applied mid August.
Deadline for application was mid September.
Written test end November
And Skype interview last week.

The HR said that by the end of January they should be able to give me a feedback.

I was wondering, could it be that they already have chosen and sent an offer to another candidate? And that she told me about end of Jan cause that’s when they except to finalize the process?

Thank for the tip MDR... it’s just so bad that they don’t communicate and keepnuse hanging! :/

Congrats... everyday you are getting closer to your dream job!
Pray for me

Thank you To answer your question, I doubt that they had already selected a candidate so quickly as the recommended ones (they typically choose maybe 3-5 from the overall pool of interviewed candidates) would have to go through the Central Review Board before the final decision can be made and that could take some time (a month seems rather plausible). Actually, I posted a link sometime ago about this under 'References'. Different UN agencies have different recruitment processes (although almost all of them are equally lengthy) for example for some agencies, all recommended candidates go through the reference checks while others it's only for the selected candidate. This is the link: https://www.unjiu.org/sites/www.unjiu.o ... nglish.pdf